11th Grade Planning Completed

Whew! It’s done! I’ve just finished planning Miles’ curriculum for this year. He’s now in the 11th grade. For the most part, I’ve gone with curriculum that’s already put together from the upcoming Time4Learning High School classes, along with a few Coursera courses thrown in. Also, this coming Spring we are aiming to have him take his first class at our local community college to start introducing him to engineering principles since he wants to be an engineer.

We will use the new Time4Learning High School curriculum for his English. More details on their website. This is the first year that Time4Learning is doing high school, but we’ve used their materials for the younger kids in the past so are very interested in what they’ll do for HS. We will also have Miles do extensive reading throughout the year of non-fiction and fiction books, as well as grammar review throughout the year to supplement.

For nutrition, which will provide Physical Wellness credits, we have chosen two Coursera courses. One starts in September; the other can be done at any time. They are “Economic Issues, Food Choices & You” – which is a 10-week course and then “Nutrition & Physical Activity for Health,” a 7-week course. Miles had followed along with part of a Coursera offering before, so he will be familiar with the overall format and structure.

Fine Arts (.5 credit)

We will have Miles do two more Coursera offerings and these are just cool! The first one is “Online Games: Literature, New Media and Narrative.” This is a 7-week course that is about multiplayer online games. I’m personally excited about this because it’s taught by Vanderbilt professor Jay Clayton. I work at Vanderbilt and read an article about his in real life course several years ago and how popular it was amongst the students. This should be fun! Miles will also take “Comic Books and Graphic Novels” – a course that surveys the history of American comics and graphic novels. These should provide a fun diversion to his more routine subjects. 🙂

Web Design (.5 credit)

I will be ensuring that Miles learns HTML, CSS and WordPress this year and is able to create websites using WordPress. I’m a huge WP fangirl and have used it already for more than 80+ websites. So.. his instructor will be ME. :-). And, we already have two real-life projects identified for him to work on that will give him practical experience. Then, I may have him help me with some of my genealogy sites as extra practice (evil grin).

Technical Graphics (.5 credit)

Because we think it will be good for him to start exercising more independence, we really want to enroll him in Nashville State Community College courses. Tentatively we have one identified that teaches computer drawing skills — something that could come in handy in engineering right? Then, next year, we can have him do more there.

In addition to these, we’re going to make sure he gets plenty of standardized testing practice in, as well as the real tests. These will include the ACT, SAT, the PSAT, and SAT Subject Tests. Given his homeschooling, I’m a little unsure how colleges will consider him, so we want to position him well so that he has at least those under his belt. Plus, the state of Tennessee gives free money for going to a TN state school with certain score requirements on the ACT (which Miles already meets).

Of course some of this will get refined throughout the year, but I am very glad to have mapped out the bigger picture. Here we go with another busy school year!

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2 thoughts on “11th Grade Planning Completed”

Thank you for sharing your son’s 11th grade plan! I’ve been looking into the Time4Learning highschool classes, but am a little nervous about signing up because they are new and “unknown.” Has Miles started yet? Please post an update with your impressions especially the chemistry course 🙂 I’m also going to jot down those Coursera courses…they all sound interesting!

Hi Kathy – thanks for the comments. Yes, we have started the T4L curriculum and so far so good. T4L has been around for awhile, it’s just their high school choices that are new. I’ll send you an email.